AROUND THE GALLERIES

The Dutch-born conceptual artist Bas Jan Ader, who disappeared in 1975 while attempting to cross the Atlantic in a small sailboat for a work titled “In Search of the Miraculous,” left a slender, quixotic oeuvre -- films and photographs, primarily -- that’s grown only more resonant with the passing of time. It’s brought him to an almost cultish degree of reverence today, particularly in the eyes of other artists.

Homages abound. A cursory Web search yields no fewer than 15, assembled on a site devoted to Ader’s work. Most involve young artists reenacting one or another of his candid, intensely physical actions -- falling from the roof of a house, dangling from a tree branch, crying in front of a camera -- as if engaging in some cathartic rite of art historical passage.

“Rarely Seen Bas Jan Ader Film,” by New York-based artist David Horvitz -- the centerpiece of his exhibition of the same name at 2nd Cannons Publications -- is one of these homages: a five-second video featuring a grainy black-and-white film clip of a man riding a bicycle into the ocean -- an allusion to Ader’s famous film “Fall II,” in which he rides a bicycle into an Amsterdam canal, as well as to the nature of his presumed death.

Horvitz’s aim in the piece goes beyond catharsis, however, to address broader questions of authorship and influence, as well as to pose a subtle but pointed critique of the economic ideologies governing visual art and electronic media. His methods are good-natured and playful but canny. The resulting project is a succinct conceptual puzzle that channels the spirit of his predecessor and his predecessor’s then-peers, Bruce Nauman and Chris Burden.

Horvitz posted his video on YouTube in 2007 under the false aegis of Patrick Painter Gallery, which represents Ader’s estate, characterizing it as a posthumously discovered work. The gallery objected, and the video was deleted. An “exchange of e-mails” transpired, according to the 2nd Cannons press release, but Horvitz apparently won: The video is up now, under a slightly different name, along with a handful of somewhat befuddled comments.

The exhibition presents the video in a hypnotic loop on a monitor on the floor of the gallery’s closet-sized space, along with two additional components: a flip-book version of the video, published by 2nd Cannons, and a fold-out newsprint poster emblazoned on one side with an image of the sea taken from a beach in southern England -- the expected destination of Ader’s ill-fated final journey -- and, on the other, a long, first-person passage of text describing a trip to Coney Island. (In this and in other recent works, Horvitz displays a fascination for the phenomenology of travel and geographical distance.)

In a clear nod to both the art market and the entertainment industry -- two industries struggling with varying degrees of success to uphold the terms of an object-based economy in the face of rapidly evolving circumstances -- he goes out of his way to make the video freely available: on You Tube, on his own website and on the gallery’s website. The flip book is cheap ($10) and the fold out free.

A zip file, available for download on Horvitz’s website, contains the video as well as the image of the sea, along with instructions for printing. “Both the video and the image can be used freely,” he states. “You do not need my permission for duplicating, exhibiting, publishing, hosting, etc.”

Horvitz underscores the ideological contrast by providing a link, in the show’s press release, to a lengthy 2004 Art in America article detailing the status of Ader’s estate in the years since his disappearance -- including a critical account of Patrick Painter’s posthumous editioning of previously unprinted works. One wonders, indeed, whether Horvitz wasn’t hoping for more of a fight from the gallery in the YouTube squabble. What remains nonetheless is a reverent emphasis on the almost mystical purity of Ader’s practice.

Horvitz’s indebtedness, in this and in other recent works, to the Conceptualists of Ader’s generation is so great as to border, at times, on sheer imitation -- and it may be that this young artist, who has one foot in the indie rock world (directing music videos, touring with and photographing the band Xui Xui), has yet to find his own footing.

There’s heart to the work, however, and a kind of shrewd integrity that leaves little doubt that he will.

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2nd Cannons Publications, 510 Bernard St., Los Angeles, (323) 267-0650, through Aug. 8. Fridays and Saturday, noon-6 p.m.

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Splendid images from then, now

“The Splendour of Fear,” at Michael Benevento Gallery, is a rarity among summer group shows: thoughtful, substantive and elegant, with a strong selection of individual works, any one of which more than justifies a visit.

The show revolves around a loose but surprisingly distinct theme, assembling six artists whose work, according to press materials, reflects a spectrum of somewhat gothic sensations: “intimacy to a point of discomfort, beauty within decay . . . melancholy . . . sadness and obsession.”

It balances photographs and video from the 1960s -- by Sigmar Polke and Stan Brakhage -- with like-minded recent work by artists whose names are less familiar. All rise to the association.

Cerith Wyn Evans sets the tone in the front foyer with a wall-mounted, red neon rose blossom -- a luridly sensual vision that falls curiously short of tacky. Sergej Jensen is represented by a muted abstraction on stretched cotton, marred by a single, wound-like puncture; JD Williams by a dozen peculiar mixed-media drawings featuring what looks like a dance between two cutout brains.

Polke’s photographs of familiar objects cast in odd arrangements are a treat, as always -- particularly a small color print involving a rainbow-hued afghan blanket interwoven with flowers.

Equally memorable are three small black-and-white Polaroids by Saul Fletcher depicting poignant details in an apparently abandoned interior space.

The highlight, even among such distinguished company, is the pair of works by Brakhage: “Mothlight,” from 1963, a rapidly moving, three-minute collage sequence made by fixing the wings of dead moths directly to film; and “I . . . Dreaming,” from 1988, a beautiful, six-minute meditation on life, death, family, home and the body, told through impressionistic footage of the aging artist, his young granddaughters, and the shifting interplay of light and shadow around the interior of a house. “Intimacy to a point of discomfort,” indeed.

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Michael Benevento Gallery, 7578 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, (323) 874-6400, through Aug. 22. Closed Sunday and Monday.

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A dot for every Iraq war fatality

Trang Le, who grew up in Vietnam in the 1970s and immigrated to the U.S. in 1982, comes to the subject of the Iraq war from a place of personal experience, with a depth of compassion that resonates through the heartfelt statement to her show Mesopotamia, at Ruth Bachofner Gallery, as well as through the work itself.

The show’s centerpiece is “102,477,” a six-panel, 48-foot-long abstract painting made in direct response to the conflict. The title refers to the war’s estimated death toll (by what source, Le doesn’t specify), as well as to the number of small, spiral-centered blue dots that wash across the black ground of the canvas in robust waves. She characterizes the piece as a therapeutic act: a meditative practice of repetitive motion, intended to honor the memory of the dead and to transform the energy of violence and tragedy into that of creation and beauty.

The rationale might seem a tad sentimental if it weren’t such a breathtaking painting: monumental in scale and fittingly dramatic, yet achingly delicate and serene, with a range of tones suggesting the depths of the ocean.

The show contains a handful of handsome smaller paintings as well, but “102,477” is the showstopper. One hopes it finds the sort of home where it has the opportunity to make an impact.

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Ruth Bachofner Gallery, 2525 Michigan Ave., G2, Santa Monica, (310) 829-3300, through July 18. Closed Sunday and Monday.

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These artworks are making noise

“Instruments,” at Solway Jones, builds on the gallery’s long-standing interest in the line between visual art and sound to present just what its title implies: a selection of artist-designed, sound-producing objects as compelling in their aural as their visual presence.

The works span from the early ‘70s through present day. Save a charming trio of stringless banjos painted with folk-art-inspired scenes by Clare Rojas, nearly all are functional and available for demonstration by a gallery associate.

There are a number of string instruments -- two harp-like pieces by Robert Wilhite; another by William T. Wiley; a cello and a bass by William Leavitt -- as well as a trio of gongs (also by Wilhite), and a beautifully carved long, pale wood structure housing a single piano key and string by Koh Byoung-ok.

Several are purely electronic: Paul De Marinis’ 1973 “Pygmy Gamelan,” for instance, a nondescript device that amplifies ambient radio waves; Nam June Paik’s 1994 “I Wrote This in Tokyo in 1954,” a 144-note music box mechanism nestled inside a vintage television frame, with a miniature video camera transmitting it to the screen; a trio of synthesizers built from children’s electronics; and a lovingly scrappy pair of amplification devices by Dani Tull (who will perform at the gallery on July 25).

My own favorite, so subtle in the din of the others that one could almost miss it, is Byoung-ok’s 2007 “Two Glass Clocks,” which consists of a pair of unmarked pint glasses into which the battery-powered gears of two dismantled clocks have been dropped. Each retains merely a second hand that, pinned by the wall of the glass, taps a steady, deliciously delicate rhythm on the lip.

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Solway Jones, 990 N. Hill St., Suite180, Los Angeles, (323) 223-0224, through Aug. 15. Closed Sunday and Monday.